The Evolution of the Automobile

The first automobile was built in 1769 by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, and it had a stream-powered engine. For a while steam was the only way to power machines, but in 1885 Karl Benz created the first machine to have an internal combustion engine. But for a while steam was the primary source to power any machine. Around the early 1900's is when steam-powered vehicles reached their peak, but during WW2 the internal combustion engine also started to gain traction and soon became the primary source since it was more reliable than a steam-powered engine. After the war you started to see more customization on cars and it soon lead to the era of the muscle car. This is where we found out how much we could do to our cars and make them go faster. Then we have the modern era of cars and this is where cars became more fuel efficient, had increasing computer-aided design and standardization. There was also an increase in the use of electronics for both engine management and entertainment systems. Some cars also started to run on different types of fuel such electricity, and more recently but not as popular is solar power. Also during the modern era came the rise of super cars which have been built to go as fast as possible, and are very high tech.